Emergence of Literacy in Preschool Children with Disabilities

Hammill Institute on Disabilities

Emergence of Literacy in Preschool Children with DisabilitiesAuthor(s): David S. KatimsSource: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), pp. 58-69Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511105 .

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EMERGENCE OF LITERACY IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

WITH DISABILITIES

David S. Katims

Abstract. The purpose of this investigation was to explore and document ways in which behaviors indicative of emerging literacy may be promoted in a group of preschool children (n=14; mean CA=5.2) with mild to moderate disabilities. Class- room procedures included immersing the children in a literature-rich environment with multiple daily readings by adults of a small number of familiar and predictable books. Structured techniques were used to encourage the children independently to interact with books. Results indicate that the literacy development of children with disabilities, like youngsters without disabilities, can be influenced through classroom curriculum and procedures.

How do young preschool children with disabilities become literate? Traditionally, reading instruction for children with learning and behavior problems has taken a skills-centered decoding approach. For decades, the literature in special education has been dominated by articles and books on instructional strategies to improve the separate skills of letter-sound associations, word recognition, word identification, phonetic analysis, structural analysis, and reading comprehen- sion (Cohen, 1973; Englemann, 1969; Hegge, Kirk, & Kirk, 1955; Mercer & Mercer, 1992; Simms & Falcon, 1987; Vickery, 1987).

As a result, special educators have come to believe that instruction in reading for children of all ages is optimally aided by breaking the task down into specific, hierarchical subcomponents (Chall, 1967; Ekwall, 1989; Haring & Bateman, 1977). Ironically, however, the very abstractness of many of these subskills presented in isolation may constitute the primary weakness in applying them to children who characteristically have diffi- culty acquiring, maintaining, and generalizing concepts (Hargis, 1982; Poplin, 1988; Spache, 1976).

In contrast, some researchers have demonstrated that many children with disabilities develop basic literacy in ways remarkably similar to

those of children without disabilities (Brazee & Haynes, 1989; Cutler & Stone, 1988; Good- man, 1982; Hasselriss, 1982; Katims, 1991; Reid & Hresko, 1980; Wiederholt & Hale, 1982). To become literate, children must apply their knowledge of spoken language and their understanding of the uses of language to the processes of reading and writing written language. Learning to read and write is, therefore, a natural next step in the process of language development (Olson, 1984; Reid & Hresko, 1980; Smith, 1971; Snow, 1983).

Sulzby (1985a) believed that learning to read and write involves a reconceptualization by children of their language which had its beginnings in oral contexts and functions. "...the acquisition of literacy can be said to involve a transition from oral language to written language, albeit a complex transition in modern literacy cultures" (p. 460). Emergent or early literacy implies that literacy development begins well before young children actually begin to read and write conven-

DAVID S. KATIMS, Ed.D., is Associate Pro- fessor of Special Education, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Division of Educa- tion, The University of Texas at San Antonio.

58 Learning Disability Quarterly



tionally (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Sulzby & Teale, 1991; Teale & Sulzby, 1986, 1987). Children immersed regularly in literacy-rich environments learn about written language by handling books, hearing stories read aloud by adults, drawing pictures, and attempting to write about real-life experiences. Further, children learn about reading and writing by participating with adults in holistic, meaningful literacy activities, and ultimately by practicing independently what they learn in their interactions with adults.

The result is that the way children actually learn about reading and writing is similar to the ways in which they learn to listen and speak-all processes that are influenced by immersion in meaningful and stimulating environments. Re- searchers have discovered that behaviors such as young children's interest in and eventual retelling of favorite stories to themselves, their friends, stuffed animals, or pets, greatly facilitate their emerging literacy development (Clark, 1976; Durkin, 1966; Teale, 1982, 1984; Teale & Sulzby, 1989; Sulzby, 1985a, 1985b, 1988).

These nonconventional pretend readings, called independent reenactments, or emergent storybook readings, are at the root of literacy development for the young child (Teale & Sulzby, 1987). Descriptions of young children's reenactments of favorite stories indicate that their attempts to read are natural companions of the storybook read-aloud, reflecting the children's experience during storybook readings. Hoskisson (1979) asserted that these picture or memory readings facilitate the transition to more conventional forms of reading and, at the very least, encourage understanding of the foundation behaviors of print concepts such as: books have pages; pages can be turned; books have a right and wrong way up; and pictures help tell a story. In independently reenacting familiar stories, children have the opportunity to practice what they learn during reading aloud; they can reconstruct the vocabulary and syntactic structures of written language and the organizational structure of stories (Holdaway, 1979). Further, independent reenactments allow children to engage in important reading strategies such as monitoring the meanings they construct and using multiple clues to predict upcoming words. Pappas (1987) described independent reenactments as "protoreadings," a key player in such aspects of early childhood literacy development as understanding

the concepts of written language and vocabulary development.

A number of descriptive studies of children's independent reenactments indicate that as children attempt to read the same book repeatedly, their "reading" sounds more and more like the actual text of the story (Doake, 1981; Haussler, 1982; Holdaway, 1979; Rossman, 1980). In one large-scale study, Sulzby (1985a) systematically described reenactments of familiar storybooks by 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, reporting in detail 11 types of emergent storybook reading behaviors that appear to be developmental in nature. The discovered patterns demonstrate that children progress from treating individual pages as discrete units to understanding the story as a unit, using language that creates a story across pages. Once children begin to cre- ate stories, their speech progresses from being characteristically oral language-like to being written language-like. Individual children in the study were seen to move from strategies of (a) labeling and commenting on items in discrete pictures, to (b) weaving an oral recount over the pictures in order, to (c) creating a story with the prosody and wording of written language, to (d) using print in preconventional ways to read the story, and finally, to (e) reading the story convention- ally. It is apparent that children's independent readings of familiar books are part of an ongoing process in which print-governed reading naturally follows picture-governed reading at a later stage of development.

The link between adult-child reading and the child's independent reenactment of books has been well documented (Martinez & Teale, 1988; Teale, 1981, 1982, 1984; Teale & Martinez, 1988). In a case study covering a period of over two years in a child's life, Teale and Sulzby (1987) found that storybook reading allowed the child to experience the reading act and to per- form before she was fully competent. Perfor- mance, in turn, led to the independent practice of reading: reenactments of familiar books that not only mirrored the parent-child interaction but also were creative in that the child read in a new, inventive way rather than mimicking the interaction. This parallels Sulzby's (1985a) research on children's independent reenactments in which she found "[t]he child is not delivering a rote memorization; rather, the child is using strategic, effortful, conceptually driven behav-

Volume 17, Winter 1994 59



iors..." (p. 470), such as overgeneralization of written-language-like patterns and self-correc- tions, prior to the time that the child is attending to print in the reading attempt. All these authors stress that such reenactments play a significant role in children's literacy acquisition.

Sulzby and Teale (1987) found that children can also show a generalization of emerging literacy understandings, including independent reenactments across languages-specifically, English and Spanish. In a longitudinal study focusing on parent-child storybook style and interactions of low- and middle-income Hispanic and Anglo tod- dlers and preschoolers, these authors found that all eight of the children in the study began spon- taneous emergent readings. In the second part of their study involving a large sample of low- income preschoolers and kindergarteners, incipi- ently bilingual children read emergently from the same storybook in both English and Spanish forms, with approximately the same level of emergent storybook reading in both languages.

While the contribution of independent reenactments to literacy development in the young child has been documented in these previous studies, the present study sought to extend our understanding of how fundamental literacy behaviors are developed in young children with learning and behavior disabilities. Other literature has dealt with the relationship between literacy-rich, whole-language environments and the development of reading and writing in elementary-age children with disabilities (Altwerger & Bird, 1982; Bear & Cheney, 1991; Farris & Andersen, 1990; Leigh, 1980; Pflaum & Bryan, 1982; Rhodes & Shannon, 1982; Salvage & Brazee, 1991). The present research focuses on the use of classroom procedures to advance the initial literacy of preschool children with disabilities.

METHOD Purpose

The purpose of the investigation reported in this article was to explore and document ways in which different types of emerging literacy behaviors may be actively promoted in a group of preschool children with mild to moderate learning and behavior disabilities. The yearlong study was founded upon the notion that literacy is developmental in nature, and is strongly associated with exposure to, and direct experience with,

the language and pictures found in children's literature. An attempt was made to directly en- hance the children's emerging literacy behaviors, including differing types of independent reenactments and concepts of print found in books.

Classroom procedures included immersing the children in a literature-rich environment by way of an accessible, attractive classroom library center, with repeated daily readings by adults of a relatively small number of familiar and predictable books. The use of books that were both familiar and predictable constituted a major ele- ment of the study. Such literature allowed the children to interactively participate in, and successfully respond to, a series of structured activities conducted by adults in the classroom.

A three-phase sampling, predicting, and confirming cycle as described by Tompkins and We- beler (1983) was used in conjunction with familiar and predictable books as the foundation for structuring the literacy activities in the classroom. Tompkins and Webeler (1983) believed that prereaders can use the three-step cycle while listening to books read aloud. Beginning readers can be prompted with this cycle to help them make and confirm important predictions about stories, eventually leading to higher levels of independent interactions with books.

In the first step of the procedure, sampling, children select the most useful syntactic, semantic or pictorial information from a page in a story on which to base a prediction of what is happening on the page. For example, using Gal- done's The Three Bears (1972), an adult would show a group of children pictures and text ap- pearing on the pages of the open book.

Then in the second step, predicting, a child or a group of children would make a prediction using the clue or clues selected during sampling (usually a pictorial clue). The teacher would ask the children to make a prediction about the identification of a character, and what he is saying ("What do you think Papa Bear is saying on this page?").

In the final step, confirming, the children would have their prediction confirmed by listening to the adult read the page aloud to be sure that what they said makes sense ("Yes, you're right, that is Papa Bear in the picture, and he is saying 'Somebody has been sitting in my chair'. ").

Other techniques used in the classroom in-




cluded assisted readings, in which children would be directed to repeat either words, sentences, or phrases immediately following their oral reading by an adult (Adult: "...listen carefully, can you repeat after me what Baby Bear says next..."). Children were also encouraged to supply missing words of sentences, partially read aloud by adults from books (Adult: "... and then Baby Bear said:

."); and to engage children in interactive dialogues about story content in order to facilitate concepts of written language contained in books (Adult: "Maria, have you ever seen a big, brown bear before?" Maria: "Yes, at the zoo." Adult: "What sound did he make?" Maria: "Growl." Adult: "Do you think that bears really eat porridge?" Maria: "No, they eat bear food." And so on). And finally, modeling and demonstration of book handling and independent interactions was used daily (Adult: "Look at Maria with her book, can you turn the pages of your book like Maria?"). Subjects

The 14 subjects demonstrated a range of disabilities. Children with mild to moderate mental retardation comprised approximately one-third of the group; the other two-thirds were comprised of children with learning, behavioral and physical disorders, as well as general developmental and speech and language disorders. Par- ticipants' chronological ages ranged from 4 years, 3 months to 6 years, 4 months, with the average age being 5 years, 2 months. There were 9 males and 5 females in the group. Ten of the children were Hispanic. The remaining children were white, non-Hispanic. The study was conducted in a middle- class, suburban elementary school in south Texas.

The classroom teacher served as the imple- menter. She held a bachelor's degree in natural science, with state certification in noncategorical special education, and a master's degree in com- munication disorders. In addition, she had com- pleted six graduate-level courses in early childhood special education. Her orientation to literacy for young children was reflected in the developmental early childhood special education curriculum used in the classroom. The curriculum consisted of domains in fine and gross mo- tor, language, self-help, and social and cognitive skills. Procedure

Prior to the commencement of the school

year, the classroom teacher and two undergrad- uate special education practicum students at- tended a 1-day training session in classroom or- ganization, instructional procedures in emergent literacy, and data collection. The training session consisted of a lecture and demonstrations pro- vided by the researcher, as well as video record- ings of children engaged in various independent interactions with books. The practicum students worked under the supervision of the cooperating teacher 5 days a week implementing instructional procedures in emergent literacy and col- lecting data. The researcher visited the classroom every other week for the duration of the study as a consultant to answer questions and facilitate the project. The practicum students were involved in ongoing training and practice in emergent literacy procedures directed by the researcher in order to assure consistency and validity in implementation and documentation.

Young children in early childhood special education were immersed in a structured, literature- rich classroom environment. In order to strengthen the children's fundamental compe- tencies in emerging literacy, an action-oriented, directive model of "intervention" was used. Pro- cedures within the self-contained classroom were geared to promote growth in basic initial literacy by considering well-established, typical characteristics of children with learning and behavior disabilities (see, for example, MacMillan, Keogh, & Jones, 1986; Reschly, 1987; Warren & Tay- lor, 1984).

In addition to structuring and systematizing classroom procedures and routines (such as multiple daily storybook readings, daily visits to the classroom library, using the prediction cycle, and assisted readings), a directive approach was used to account for deficiencies in, and problems with, discrimination, attention, distractibility, in- cidental learning, passivity, and so on. As a result fundamental, initial literacy behaviors were not merely facilitated, but were actively promoted each day for the entire school year. This orientation is unique by departing from a tradi- tional, facilitative approach espoused by many who investigate emergent literacy with children without disabilities (Haussler, 1982; Martinez & Teale, 1988; Pappas, 1987; Schickedanz, 1986; Teale & Martinez, 1988; Teale & Sulzby, 1987).

Library center. An inviting classroom library




center was created in which the children had

daily exposure to, and numerous experiences with, a relatively small number of familiar books. The same 49 books were displayed (to show the cover of each book) in the classroom library for the duration of the study. By design, each book was systematically introduced and made to become familiar to the children early in the study. Since it has been documented that children without disabilities (Martinez & Teale, 1988), as well as children with disabilities (Katims, 1991), interact in more sophisticated ways with familiar books, this factor was held constant. The expec- tation was that a library containing all familiar books would encourage children's interactions with books and aid language competence theo- rized to be vital to producing basic beginning literacy behaviors.

The availability of predictable books has been shown to affect children's preference for books selected from a classroom library (Bridge, 1986; Katims, 1991; Martinez & Teale, 1988; Rhodes, 1981). Therefore, a small number of predictable books were purposely chosen to ver- ify their impact on the children's interactions in the classroom library. Approximately one-quarter, or 13 of the books in the library, were of the predictable type. According to Teale and Mar- tinez (1988), predictable books and stories may, in some cases, afford young children a special kind of access because their predictable features directly aid, facilitate, and encourage the children to reconstruct the story independently.

Books and stories considered "predictable" are those containing rhythmical, repetitive patterns and/or natural-sounding, dependable story structure and plots. These features make it easy for children to begin predicting what will be on the page, avoiding strict syntactic and vocabulary control so common to basal readers.

According to McClure (1985), there are at least three types of predictable books. In the repetitive predictable book, the author repeats words, phrases, or themes, so that the pattern can easily be learned after only a few pages. Typical examples are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Martin, 1970) and I Went Walking (Williams, 1989). Other predictable books use a cumulative pattern in which previous ideas are incorporated into subsequent ones. I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Westcott, 1980) and The Gingerbread Boy

(Galdone, 1975) are excellent examples of this type of book. Finally, familiar sequence may be used as the predictable characteristic. For example, in The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, 1983), days of the week and numbers are used as two such sequences. "All three types of predictable stories provide the regularity needed by learning disabled children" (McClure, 1985, p. 270).

The classroom library also contained a collection of children's literature, including naming or labeling books, theme books, storybooks, fairy tales, picture books, alphabet books, fables, and holiday books. The children visited the classroom library center numerous times each day, working under the guidance of a trained practicum student and/or the classroom teacher. Each time, they were instructed to select a book to be "read" to themselves, to another child, or to the adult present. From the start of the study the children were directed, prompted and rein- forced for selecting and interacting with books. When selecting a book from the classroom library, the children were encouraged to "try to figure out what the story is about and what is go- ing to happen in the story by using the pictures; and what they remember from having the story read to them by an adult." Children who interacted with books in more sophisticated ways were paired with, and used as models for, children who interacted with books in less sophisticated ways.

Direct observations. The practicum students and the cooperating teacher observed and recorded activity in the classroom library at various intervals throughout the study. For each child, the observer recorded the title of each book selected independently and the most sophisticated way in which the child was able to use the book during a particular interaction.

Three types of book interactions were observed and recorded. The first, browsing, was defined as a child's rapidly flipping through the pages of a book, thus requiring the least amount of sustained attention and considered the lowest- level type of book interaction. More sustained behaviors of book interactions included silent studying, in which a child slowly turns the pages of a storybook, purposely viewing and studying specific text and/or pictures without discussion or portrayal. For the highest level of interaction, characterized as an independent reenactment,




a child verbally reenacts some or all elements of a story by using picture or memory readings or, in some instances, even printed text. Reenact- ments, ranging from picture-governed to print- governed attempts, can be performed alone, with a partner, or within a group of children.

Interrater reliability. Each observer was observed at various times throughout the study to determine how accurate she was reporting children's independent interactions in the classroom library. No observer was rated as "unacceptable" (a reliability coefficient of less than .90) in terms of reliability of observing and correctly recording library interactions.

Group storybook readings. Each day, teachers, practicum students, and paraprofes- sionals engaged in group storybook readings in combination with other directed procedures, in order to facilitate initial literacy through exposure to the language and pictures found in children's literature. Daily multiple readings of children's favorite books have been shown to encourage wide-ranging exploration of these books and to promote independent reenactments (Hoskisson, 1979; Martinez & Teale, 1988; Sulzby & Teale, 1991; Teale & Martinez, 1988). The children were prompted and encouraged daily to select "favorite" books from the classroom library to share with other members of the class at group reading time. When books were selected to be read at story time, adults would engage the children in the predictive cycle described above.

In order to accentuate vocabulary, syntactic, semantic, and pictorial features of storybooks adults in the classroom consistently used interactive dialogic, as opposed to monologic techniques as part of their daily storybook readings. Thus, various aspects of pictures, picture sequences and text were interactively discussed with children, and attempts were made to relate various aspects of stories to the personal experience of each child. The children were also directed to watch and model how adults read to the class, how books are picked up, how they are held, how pages are turned; to listen carefully to certain key words; to try to understand what is happening in a story by looking very carefully at the characters and actions in pictures;, and finally, to try to accurately predict what will happen next within a particular story.

Assisted readings. Throughout the study,

adults also used assisted readings (Hoskisson, 1975), also referred to as imitative or echo

readings (Hollingsworth & Reutzel, 1988), as children were directed to repeat words, phrases, or sentences immediately following their oral

reading by an adult. This procedure was used daily to improve the children's semantic, syntactic, lexical, and perceptual orientation toward

storybooks. As time went on, the children were also prompted to verbally supply missing parts of stories as they were read aloud by adults. At first only key words were deleted; children were asked to verbally supply the missing noun or verb. Later, main ideas and, eventually, entire sections of repeatedly read storybooks were left unread in order to optimize attention and to facilitate language competence.

Concepts about Print Test. In order to obtain a quantitative measure of children's knowledge of books, all children in the study were individually administered a test to determine their awareness of the conventions of print and books. The Concepts about Print Test (CAPT; Clay, 1979) measures children's knowledge of books. The 24-item test includes such concepts as directionality (left to right, up to down), the role of print (not pictures) in telling a story, the concepts of "letters" and "words," punctuation, and so forth.

This is the first instrument that uses a real reading experience with very young children to provide information to an observer about children's knowledge of how to handle books and the written language in books. The test can be used with nonreaders, because the child is asked to help the examiner by pointing to certain features as the examiner reads the book. This test has been reported to have appropriate validity (concurrent with a word reading test = .79) and reliability (test-retest = .89) (Clay, 1979, p. 27). The test has proven to be a sensitive indicator of one group of behaviors that support successful reading acquisition (Clay, 1979; Day & Day, 1979; Day, Day, Spicola, & Griffen, 1981; Goodman, 1981; Johns, 1980).

The Concepts about Print Test was administered to each child as a pretest in September and a parallel version as a posttest in May. With subjects serving as their own controls, gains were measured in terms of significant increases in performance from pre- to posttest using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).




RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The changes that occurred in children's inter-

actions with the small number of familiar books available in the classroom library are depicted in Tables 1 and 2.

In order to better understand the children's progress over the yearlong study, the data were divided into two periods. Period One consisted of data collected on independent library interactions from the beginning of the school year in September through January. Period Two consisted of data collected from February until the end of the school year in May. During the first period of the study, more than 90% of children's independent interactions with books in the classroom library were restricted to low-level brows-

ing and silent studying. Children were observed to engage in independent reenactments only 8% of their time in the library.

An analysis of independent reenactments of storybooks using the scheme developed by Sulzby (1985a) showed that during Period One children demonstrated reading attempts that were governed mainly by pictures, without forming a complete, integrated story. The children's independent reenactments were classified as consisting of low-level, oral language-like labeling and commenting on few items in discrete pictures without following the integrated action of the storybook. "Reading" attempts could also be characterized as disjointed and disconnected, identifying few, if any, important concepts on


Table 1 Children's Usage of Familiar Books September- January (in Percent)

Overall Books with Books with Interaction Predictable Nonpredictable

Activity with Books Structure Structure

Browsing 49 40 65

Silent Studying 43 51 32

Ind. Reenactment 8 9 3

Table 2 Children's Usage of Familiar Books February- May (in Percent)

Overall Books with Books with Interaction Predictable Nonpredictable

Activity with Books Structure Structure

Browsing 38 26 55 Silent Studying 29 29 28

Ind. Reenactment 33 45 17



each page, and with pages within books skipped.

The following is an example of an independent reenactment performed in late November by Juan (age 5 year, 2 months), identified as having mild mental retardation and serious emo- tional disturbance. Juan's interaction was with Westcott's I Know an Old Lady Who Swal- lowed a Fly (1980), a book that had been read to the class on numerous occasions since the beginning of the school year:

(01) Juan: "There's a lady eating a fly. A fly is in her mouth.

(02) There she is eating a spider...the dog is sleeping...

(03) and the cat, too...Hey, there's the old lady." Several pages later...

(04) "Look. She got a bird with her net. There's the cat again." Several pages later...

(05) "The old lady is on the floor...she broke the chair. Now

(06) the cat is in the air." (07) "She got the cow on his tail, the dog

is biting her, and the cat is biting the dog.

(08) "She looks really mad." Turning to the last page.

(09) "There's a cat, a goat, a dog, a spider, another cat, a

(10) bird, a cow with a ring in its nose, and horse, and a fly."

With experience and directive intervention procedures, the children became more sophisticated in their handling of the familiar books in the classroom library during the second period of the study. Thus, children engaged in independent reenactments 25% more often than during the previous period, for a total of 33% of their library time. Conversely, lower-level browsing and silent-studying interactions occurred less often. A chi-square test revealed a statistically significant difference at the .01 level in overall independent reenactments during Period One (8%), compared to Period Two (33%, X2 = 15.24, df =1).

An analysis of independent reenactments from Period Two showed that the children became more sophisticated in the predominant type of reenactments demonstrated. Independent reenactments continued to be governed by pictures as in the first period. However, the children were now forming complete, integrated stories

using written-like language. The children read from the first to the very last page of their favorite books, identifying and elaborating upon the descriptive and active aspects of the plot. In many instances, children orally reenacted stories verbatim, as if actually using text to govern the reenactment.

So, for example, after Westcott's I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly had been read aloud on many, many occasions over the course of the school year, an independent reenactment observed in late May included the essential, integrated concepts of an old lady swallowing a number of animals in a particular sequence in an attempt to catch the animal previously swallowed. After initially swallowing a fly, she then swallows a spider to catch the fly, a bird to catch the spider, a cat to catch the bird, a dog to catch the cat, a goat to catch the dog, a cow to catch the goat, and finally a horse to catch the cow.

To more thoroughly understand the impact of predictable literature on this group of children, the average use of predictable versus nonpredictable books was calculated from the overall interactions with books in the library. During Pe- riod One, independent reenactments occurred more with predictable books (9%) than nonpredictable books (3%). This difference was found to be statistically nonsignificant when a chi- square test was used. During the second period of the study, however, a significant difference in gains (X2 = 12.65, df = 1, p> .01) was found in the occurrence of independent reenactments with predictable books (45%) as compared to nonpredictable books (17%). In addition, the more fully integrated, written-like language that characterized independent reenactments in Pe- riod Two occurred only with repeatedly read predictable books.

Although predictable books represented approximately a quarter of the total number of books in the classroom library, the children interacted with this fraction 14% more often than with the remaining majority of nonpredictable books during the second period of the study. Similar to the findings of Martinez and Teale (1988) with a group of young children without disabilities, and Katims (1991) with a group of young children with disabilities, the children in the present study opted to interact more often and in more sophisticated ways with predictable books than with nonpredictable books.




The children's knowledge of books and print increased dramatically over the course of the study as measured by the Concepts about Print Test (Clay, 1979). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant difference between pre- and posttest (F(1,24)= 31.61, p<.001), indicating growth in knowledge about conventions of written words in books (one child was not included in this analysis due to an invalid posttest). The mean score for the subjects at the first testing period in September was 3.30 (SD = 1.43); at the second testing in May, a mean of 10.53 (SD = 4.21) was obtained. When raw scores from the test were expressed as percent- ages of accuracy, the children achieved an average of 30% growth from pre- to posttest.

In terms of statistically significant growth, these results are similar to those obtained by others (Brown & Briggs, 1986; Day & Day, 1979; Day et al., 1981), in which young, and very young, nondisabled children's knowledge of print improved over time as measured by the CAPT. McGee, Richgels, and Charlesworth (1986) suggested a reciprocal relationship between concepts about print, including knowledge of the arbitrary conventions in print, and reading ability. Experience with written language may be related to development of concepts about print which, in turn, may sharpen awareness of the ability to read. The findings of the present study warrant extending these comments to include young preschool children with disabilities.

CONCLUSION The present study sought to understand how

emerging literacy behaviors may be developed in a group of preschool children with disabilities. Classroom procedures thought to promote behaviors indicative of emerging literacy included immersing the children in a literature- rich environment, with repeated daily readings of familiar and predictable books. The emergence of fundamental literacy behaviors, including significant increases in independent reenactments, as well as in concepts of print, is believed to have occurred due to daily, multiple readings by adults of predictable storybooks throughout the yearlong study; the familiar nature of each book available in the small classroom library; and the use of such techniques as the prediction cycle, assisted readings, having children supply missing parts of text read by

adults, modeling and demonstration of book handling and independent interactions, and interactive dialogues used with children about story content. Each of these techniques is believed to have had a positive effect on the children's increased level of sophistication in their interactions with storybooks.

Katims (1991) found that even children in early childhood special education who were not exposed to emergent literacy procedures made some (nonsignificant) progress in concepts of print. The absence of a control group for com- parison purposes is a limitation of the present study. Future studies must attempt to compare different-age children receiving the same intervention. Such comparisons were difficult in the present study due to the heterogeneity of the group; in addition, many of the older children were the more intellectually, behaviorally, and physically impaired.

The findings of this study seem to indicate that preschool children with disabilities were able to demonstrate behaviors associated with emerging literacy, given structured opportuni- ties to interact within meaningful, literature-rich environments. Learning to read is an ongoing process that occurs well before children have the knowledge we once considered prerequisite. Special educators in particular believe that children learn to read as a result of mastering a specific set of prescribed skills.

From studies such as the one described here, we now know that the reverse may be true; children can master many important skills and concepts associated with reading as a result of being involved in the act of reading and other meaningful literacy activities. Even young preschool children with learning and behavior disabilities learn skills as they participate in le- gitimate and contextualized literacy activities with adults as models. These children will con- tinue to grow toward conventional literacy by exposure to other whole-language environments in which reading, writing and oral language are presented and used in personally meaningful ways. The challenge for teachers of young children with special needs is to adopt curriculum and procedures similar to, yet more structured than, those successfully used with nondisabled learners as these children grow in their quest to become literate, contributing members of our complex society.




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FOOTNOTES The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from The University of Texas at San Antonio, Fac- ulty Research Fund. Thanks go to the children, teachers, and administrators of Northside Independent School Dis- trict, whose cooperation made this work possible.

Requests for reprints should be addressed to: David S. Katims, Division of Education, Program in Special Ed- ucation, University of Texas at San Antonio, San An- tonio, TX 78249-0654.




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Emergence of Literacy in Preschool Children with Disabilities